Maybe. But this is definitely what happens when you try to implement something that fundamentally doesn't make sense.
Any sizable development project is going to run into scores of times when someone has to decide the best way to approach some particular sub-requirement, or how they need to shape the requirements to meet the overall goal. Quite a few of these decisions will be made by committees, which is bad enough, but in the best case you can look at two alternatives and try to decide which one will make the overall goal happen.
Here the overall goal is to use a no-fly list to stop terrorists. Which is not a thing that is going to happen, no matter how you design your database. Given any two ways of implementing any part of it, there's no ultimate basis for choosing one way of failing over another. Add to that the inevitable result when the more competent people on your project become aware they are just spinning their wheels (which, in Government contracting, was actually several projects before this one.)
This is the classic result of trying to implement a fundamentally flawed process. You never get a system that does the wrong thing perfectly smoothly. The wrongness at the root of your design grows and spreads forth to every corner.
Yes, I do. Cynicism is cute and all, but don't let it impair perceiving the world. Regarding the hiring policies for non-political-appointees at justice, previous administrations (of both parties) did NOT in fact do what this one did. Sure, politicians in general, suck. But don't let your depression about this prevent you from noticing when some of them suck considerably harder.
I think the point he was making is that if one person says they are a "gamer" based on their D&D playing, and another does so based on their WOW playing: they may both be valid from their own perspective, but there is little reason to assume the two people will enjoy hanging out together and chatting about their gaming experiences. So regardless of whether either is actually "better" than the other, it is in fact best if they maintain separate communities.
He tried to put that humorously because, as a D&D player, he's used to trying to communicate with other humans in an entertaining manner. This might cause some trouble understanding for others who, being WOW players, are friendless and have no life.
Looking at the picture (i.e. entirely speculative artists conception), there are plenty of open spaces cut into it. Really, this doesn't appear to be any different livability-wise than an equivalent capacity group of Manhattan skyscrapers, except all built in one go and designed by a single architect to look like a cohesive whole.
People voting multiple time using someone else name is an issue, sure. But it's a separate issue from automated fraud via compromised voting machines. Of the two, I'd say automated fraud was a much bigger, more important issue. You may disagree with that, but in any case, of the two problems, we have available a solution for one of them: a voter verified paper trail makes automated fraud radically more difficult.
As for a photo ID requirement, you're right, it's easy to get a photo ID... with any name on it you like. So I'm dubious it will reduce fraud much. It certainly denies legitimate voters, and is widely understood to deny legitimate voters of one party more than the other, so when one party makes it the center of their vote fraud efforts, and drags their feet on the completely independent, actually useful step of requiring a paper trail... Well, call me cynical, but I don't think stopping fraud is their motivation.
"How do you know that the paper you verified scrolled away into the ballot box and not into the paper shredder next to the ballot box?"
That's hard to get past honest election monitors than a piece of software that just silently changes the only record of the vote. How do I know the ballot box I put my ballot in didn't get switched for a pre-loaded one at some point? The scrolling-paper-behind-glass seems as good as a traditional box-with-slot-on-top to me. The whole thing can be inspected before the election and after, and kept locked between; harder to pull any quick shenanigans when the other sides monitor steps out to pee or whatever.
It's true, thanks to globalization, you no longer get quite as much advantage based on the arbitrary coordinates of your birth. I feel really bad for you, but, well, actually, no I don't.
Seems unlikely it will reduce "eveyone's" standard of living; I mean, yours, sure, but the guy who got your job is probably not complaining.
"If only the poor would just get off their asses and work, eh old boy? The "If you don't like it, just start up a business" line of thinking is just a roundabout way of blaming the victim, and a blanketed insult to boot."
What victim? Someone even poorer did get off their ass and did the job for less money.
Every time incomes come up, people say stupid stuff like that, because everyone is convinced it's impossible to live on any less than their own actually generous income.
Median Household Income, New York City, 2007: $46K
Half the households in NYC live on less than that.
He was, until it was pointed out that taping an LED to a battery was a bit thin to really call an "invention". Mind you, the fact that Powderly is (IMHO) a self-promoting attention monger of limited substance does not excuse any otherwise inappropriate actions of the Chinese government vis-a-vis Tibet and or Powderly.
"First, thanks for the well-reasoned response - a courtesy not commonly provided to ACs around here."
I don't usually respond to ACs, not because of any discourtesy, but because it's usually a waste of time. I'd suggest logging in if you want a response; it give people a hint you might read their reply.
"I'd say nearly anywhere you live, if some people use their locks and others don't, those who don't use their locks are easier targets."
You really think someone who wants to break in is going to try the door, find it locked, and go on to the next house? I can't see it. Maybe someone tries my door, and figures it's their lucky day, they don't have to break the window. But I'm going to get robbed either way.
"Guns are only potentially useful when criminals are intent on much worse things than burglary, and that's rare in most civilized places." And even then, their potential usefulness depends on them being loaded and ready to hand, which pretty much guarantees the chance of them being used accidentally or in the heat of passion far outweighs the chances of their being used as desired.
"have you considered the possibility that you're just lucky?"
Sure, I may well be lucky, but I'm not naive. I have considered the cost vs. benefit of owning a gun and/or fixing my lock. Based on the chances/results of either producing a positive outcome vs. the chances/results of them producing a negative one, I don't think they are worth it.
As a side note, the part about getting along with my neighbors was meant to note that I didn't expect I'd need to shoot them. I don't expect them to provide any significant monitoring of my home, which is why the lock is pointless: It would just make a crook break the window.
Life is uncertain, and there is nothing you can do about that. Bad people might do bad things to you no matter how nicely you live in how nice a place. But do locks & guns reduce that risk? Where I live, I think not. Most places, locks are a good idea. There are even places where guns are a good idea, but not many, and I don't want to live there.
Well, wiretaps do require warrants, indicating the courts disagree with you. Your interpretation it does not appear to have been shared by any federal judge ever. That doesn't make you interpretation wrong; it does make it irrelevant.
"You are not the police. Are you allowed to put a blue light on your car? No."
Good so far...
"Are you allowed to stop other drivers on the road?" Yes.
"Are you allowed to carry a gun? (well that may be different for US citizens)" Yes (It is).
"Are you allowed to write tickets?" Yes.
"Cops ain't citizens" Yes they are; it's a requirement.
"what makes people think the two should be equal in what they can do?" The question is what they can't do without a court order.
"Think about, doctors are allowed to prescribe drugs to citizens, should citizens be allowed to prescribe drugs to doctors?"
In my opinion, anyone "should" be able to prescribe drugs to anyone. The actual law is less sensible.
"Surgeons are allowed to cut open citizens, should citizens be allowed to cut open surgeons?" Yes, and they are allowed. Surgeons have no special right to use scalpels. They have a special right to claim they know what they are doing, but that's it.
"Lawyers are allowed to legal advice to citizens, should citizens be allowed to give legal advice to lawyers?"
Non-lawyers have a greater right to give legal advice than lawyers do! Anyone can give legal advice to anyone, but only lawyers can get in legal trouble if it's bad advice.
So you seem to misunderstand a bunch of the laws you cite about why some people can do things other people can't. But that doesn't really matter. Yes, you're correct that there are laws and rules saying the police can do certain things non police can't.
"For you, a private citizen, following a police officer or other official while in performance of their duties is illegal."
False. Interfering with the performance of their duties would certainly be illegal. Observing them in the performance of their duties is legal.
"And, lets face it, they are not randomly tagging people's cars in hopes of finding a crime. They are tagging cars of people who are being investigated for crimes that have been committed and/or are continually being committed."
How do you know? Maybe they are just tagging the cars of people they don't like in hopes of finding evidence of a crime, or even just of something embarrassing so they can harass the person.
As a general rule, if the police want to do anything that would be illegal for a private citizen, they should need a warrant. In this particular case, attaching something to someone elses car without their knowledge sounds illegal to me.
Done. I own no weapons, and while I usually close my door, the lock doesn't work. I just live somewhere without much crime because the local economy is good, and I get along with my neighbors.
Economic power and diplomacy are much more effective than military solutions if you want to solve problems without creating new ones.
"It wouldn't surprise me if the legal situation at YouTube was that they yank any clip against which there is a properly filed copyright complaint"
I'm going to guess you're right, since that's what the law explicitly requires them to do.
Now if the original poster submits a proper declaration asserting they have the legal right to post the material, YouTube puts it back up, and the IOC has to sue the original poster.
The DMCA did have some good bits, like this. Google doesn't have to have their lawyers review the clip; they don't need to take a side. It's between the two parties that say they have the rights to the material.
It's not so easy to remember a random series of 64 hex digits (for a 256 bit AES key) either.
You still don't need public key, so the algorithm choice is still clear: take a password/passphrase that balances memorability vs brute force resistance however you like, and use it to seed an good random number generator, and use the output as your pad. Not as good as a true OTP, but with a suitable passphrase, plenty good enough. You can come up with some "phrase" with as much effective "information" as that 256 bit AES key, but since you get to pick it, you can use something you'll remember.
The real point is, if it is possible to rely on the sender and receiver knowing something in common that the attacker doesn't (for example, if they are both you), you should forget AES or any other public key system.
If you just want to encrypt a single file for yourself, and can assure the key remains secret in practice, the algorithm should be a one time pad. You then don't care if the attacker knows this, because it's not crackable, even theoretically.
Using cryptography for storage, as you describe, is easy, and not interesting to talk about.
So when people talk about cryptography, they mean using it for communications. It's hard, and interesting, to have a secure, secret conversation while an attacker listens to every single word we say. Even all the parts about how we're going to do it, including algorithms and keys. That's kind of cool, and is essential for many practical applications where you need to create a secure channel without having one to start with.
"I'm not so sure Word Perfect and co (circa 1990) or a modern re-implementation should count as 'crapware' (frankly, that term should be reserved for dancing paperclips)."
I agree. I meant for "crapware" to refer to dancing paperclips and the like. I assert you will have a hard time loading up a modern computer with enough of that that it uses more power than the 1990 machine running wordperfect.
"It's notable that back in it's day, Word Perfect loaded and operated in about the same wall time as a modern word processor. It just did it with a fraction of the memory and CPU cycles and from much slower drives."
And it consumed a lot more energy, which is the metric we're discussing.
I said your comment about embedded chips was irrelevant because those systems don't, to my knowledge, run word processors. The sub-notebooks do. Open office on my EEE will do everything your 1990 wordperfect box will at a tiny fraction of the power consumption. (And for what it's worth, it will be much prettier, and it goes from powered off to editing a document in ~20 seconds, which is not exactly my memory of wordperfect)
Via sustainable, environmentally responsible methods you can produce amounts of food that compare favorably with what you can produce via various nasty methods currently in use. But either one is "modern agriculture".
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe. But this is definitely what happens when you try to implement something that fundamentally doesn't make sense.
Any sizable development project is going to run into scores of times when someone has to decide the best way to approach some particular sub-requirement, or how they need to shape the requirements to meet the overall goal. Quite a few of these decisions will be made by committees, which is bad enough, but in the best case you can look at two alternatives and try to decide which one will make the overall goal happen.
Here the overall goal is to use a no-fly list to stop terrorists. Which is not a thing that is going to happen, no matter how you design your database. Given any two ways of implementing any part of it, there's no ultimate basis for choosing one way of failing over another. Add to that the inevitable result when the more competent people on your project become aware they are just spinning their wheels (which, in Government contracting, was actually several projects before this one.)
This is the classic result of trying to implement a fundamentally flawed process. You never get a system that does the wrong thing perfectly smoothly. The wrongness at the root of your design grows and spreads forth to every corner.
Yes, I do.
Cynicism is cute and all, but don't let it impair perceiving the world. Regarding the hiring policies for non-political-appointees at justice, previous administrations (of both parties) did NOT in fact do what this one did.
Sure, politicians in general, suck. But don't let your depression about this prevent you from noticing when some of them suck considerably harder.
I think the point he was making is that if one person says they are a "gamer" based on their D&D playing, and another does so based on their WOW playing: they may both be valid from their own perspective, but there is little reason to assume the two people will enjoy hanging out together and chatting about their gaming experiences. So regardless of whether either is actually "better" than the other, it is in fact best if they maintain separate communities.
He tried to put that humorously because, as a D&D player, he's used to trying to communicate with other humans in an entertaining manner. This might cause some trouble understanding for others who, being WOW players, are friendless and have no life.
Looking at the picture (i.e. entirely speculative artists conception), there are plenty of open spaces cut into it. Really, this doesn't appear to be any different livability-wise than an equivalent capacity group of Manhattan skyscrapers, except all built in one go and designed by a single architect to look like a cohesive whole.
"How is that harder to get past election monitors?"
The presence of a shredder in the box might be a clue.
People voting multiple time using someone else name is an issue, sure. But it's a separate issue from automated fraud via compromised voting machines. Of the two, I'd say automated fraud was a much bigger, more important issue. You may disagree with that, but in any case, of the two problems, we have available a solution for one of them: a voter verified paper trail makes automated fraud radically more difficult.
As for a photo ID requirement, you're right, it's easy to get a photo ID... with any name on it you like. So I'm dubious it will reduce fraud much. It certainly denies legitimate voters, and is widely understood to deny legitimate voters of one party more than the other, so when one party makes it the center of their vote fraud efforts, and drags their feet on the completely independent, actually useful step of requiring a paper trail... Well, call me cynical, but I don't think stopping fraud is their motivation.
"How do you know that the paper you verified scrolled away into the ballot box and not into the paper shredder next to the ballot box?"
That's hard to get past honest election monitors than a piece of software that just silently changes the only record of the vote. How do I know the ballot box I put my ballot in didn't get switched for a pre-loaded one at some point? The scrolling-paper-behind-glass seems as good as a traditional box-with-slot-on-top to me. The whole thing can be inspected before the election and after, and kept locked between; harder to pull any quick shenanigans when the other sides monitor steps out to pee or whatever.
Apple does everything first.
As long as you don't consider computers not made by Apple.
It's true, thanks to globalization, you no longer get quite as much advantage based on the arbitrary coordinates of your birth. I feel really bad for you, but, well, actually, no I don't.
Seems unlikely it will reduce "eveyone's" standard of living; I mean, yours, sure, but the guy who got your job is probably not complaining.
"If only the poor would just get off their asses and work, eh old boy? The "If you don't like it, just start up a business" line of thinking is just a roundabout way of blaming the victim, and a blanketed insult to boot."
What victim? Someone even poorer did get off their ass and did the job for less money.
Every time incomes come up, people say stupid stuff like that, because everyone is convinced it's impossible to live on any less than their own actually generous income.
Median Household Income, New York City, 2007: $46K
Half the households in NYC live on less than that.
He was, until it was pointed out that taping an LED to a battery was a bit thin to really call an "invention". Mind you, the fact that Powderly is (IMHO) a self-promoting attention monger of limited substance does not excuse any otherwise inappropriate actions of the Chinese government vis-a-vis Tibet and or Powderly.
"First, thanks for the well-reasoned response - a courtesy not commonly provided to ACs around here."
I don't usually respond to ACs, not because of any discourtesy, but because it's usually a waste of time. I'd suggest logging in if you want a response; it give people a hint you might read their reply.
"I'd say nearly anywhere you live, if some people use their locks and others don't, those who don't use their locks are easier targets."
You really think someone who wants to break in is going to try the door, find it locked, and go on to the next house? I can't see it. Maybe someone tries my door, and figures it's their lucky day, they don't have to break the window. But I'm going to get robbed either way.
"Guns are only potentially useful when criminals are intent on much worse things than burglary, and that's rare in most civilized places."
And even then, their potential usefulness depends on them being loaded and ready to hand, which pretty much guarantees the chance of them being used accidentally or in the heat of passion far outweighs the chances of their being used as desired.
"have you considered the possibility that you're just lucky?"
Sure, I may well be lucky, but I'm not naive. I have considered the cost vs. benefit of owning a gun and/or fixing my lock. Based on the chances/results of either producing a positive outcome vs. the chances/results of them producing a negative one, I don't think they are worth it.
As a side note, the part about getting along with my neighbors was meant to note that I didn't expect I'd need to shoot them. I don't expect them to provide any significant monitoring of my home, which is why the lock is pointless: It would just make a crook break the window.
Life is uncertain, and there is nothing you can do about that. Bad people might do bad things to you no matter how nicely you live in how nice a place. But do locks & guns reduce that risk? Where I live, I think not. Most places, locks are a good idea. There are even places where guns are a good idea, but not many, and I don't want to live there.
Well, wiretaps do require warrants, indicating the courts disagree with you. Your interpretation it does not appear to have been shared by any federal judge ever. That doesn't make you interpretation wrong; it does make it irrelevant.
Just to answer your questions for where I live:
"You are not the police. Are you allowed to put a blue light on your car? No."
Good so far...
"Are you allowed to stop other drivers on the road?"
Yes.
"Are you allowed to carry a gun? (well that may be different for US citizens)"
Yes (It is).
"Are you allowed to write tickets?"
Yes.
"Cops ain't citizens"
Yes they are; it's a requirement.
"what makes people think the two should be equal in what they can do?"
The question is what they can't do without a court order.
"Think about, doctors are allowed to prescribe drugs to citizens, should citizens be allowed to prescribe drugs to doctors?"
In my opinion, anyone "should" be able to prescribe drugs to anyone. The actual law is less sensible.
"Surgeons are allowed to cut open citizens, should citizens be allowed to cut open surgeons?"
Yes, and they are allowed. Surgeons have no special right to use scalpels. They have a special right to claim they know what they are doing, but that's it.
"Lawyers are allowed to legal advice to citizens, should citizens be allowed to give legal advice to lawyers?"
Non-lawyers have a greater right to give legal advice than lawyers do! Anyone can give legal advice to anyone, but only lawyers can get in legal trouble if it's bad advice.
So you seem to misunderstand a bunch of the laws you cite about why some people can do things other people can't. But that doesn't really matter. Yes, you're correct that there are laws and rules saying the police can do certain things non police can't.
This isn't one of those things.
As far as I know, you're entirely wrong. Can you reference such a law from any state at all?
"For you, a private citizen, following a police officer or other official while in performance of their duties is illegal."
False. Interfering with the performance of their duties would certainly be illegal. Observing them in the performance of their duties is legal.
"And, lets face it, they are not randomly tagging people's cars in hopes of finding a crime. They are tagging cars of people who are being investigated for crimes that have been committed and/or are continually being committed."
How do you know? Maybe they are just tagging the cars of people they don't like in hopes of finding evidence of a crime, or even just of something embarrassing so they can harass the person.
As a general rule, if the police want to do anything that would be illegal for a private citizen, they should need a warrant. In this particular case, attaching something to someone elses car without their knowledge sounds illegal to me.
Done. I own no weapons, and while I usually close my door, the lock doesn't work. I just live somewhere without much crime because the local economy is good, and I get along with my neighbors.
Economic power and diplomacy are much more effective than military solutions if you want to solve problems without creating new ones.
"But history has shown us pretty conclusively that absolute monarchies tend to have more wicked than wonderful rulers."
How do they compare to rule by totalitarian foreign invaders?
"It wouldn't surprise me if the legal situation at YouTube was that they yank any clip against which there is a properly filed copyright complaint"
I'm going to guess you're right, since that's what the law explicitly requires them to do.
Now if the original poster submits a proper declaration asserting they have the legal right to post the material, YouTube puts it back up, and the IOC has to sue the original poster.
The DMCA did have some good bits, like this. Google doesn't have to have their lawyers review the clip; they don't need to take a side. It's between the two parties that say they have the rights to the material.
It's not so easy to remember a random series of 64 hex digits (for a 256 bit AES key) either.
You still don't need public key, so the algorithm choice is still clear: take a password/passphrase that balances memorability vs brute force resistance however you like, and use it to seed an good random number generator, and use the output as your pad. Not as good as a true OTP, but with a suitable passphrase, plenty good enough. You can come up with some "phrase" with as much effective "information" as that 256 bit AES key, but since you get to pick it, you can use something you'll remember.
The real point is, if it is possible to rely on the sender and receiver knowing something in common that the attacker doesn't (for example, if they are both you), you should forget AES or any other public key system.
If you just want to encrypt a single file for yourself, and can assure the key remains secret in practice, the algorithm should be a one time pad. You then don't care if the attacker knows this, because it's not crackable, even theoretically.
Using cryptography for storage, as you describe, is easy, and not interesting to talk about.
So when people talk about cryptography, they mean using it for communications. It's hard, and interesting, to have a secure, secret conversation while an attacker listens to every single word we say. Even all the parts about how we're going to do it, including algorithms and keys. That's kind of cool, and is essential for many practical applications where you need to create a secure channel without having one to start with.
"I'm not so sure Word Perfect and co (circa 1990) or a modern re-implementation should count as 'crapware' (frankly, that term should be reserved for dancing paperclips)."
I agree. I meant for "crapware" to refer to dancing paperclips and the like. I assert you will have a hard time loading up a modern computer with enough of that that it uses more power than the 1990 machine running wordperfect.
"It's notable that back in it's day, Word Perfect loaded and operated in about the same wall time as a modern word processor. It just did it with a fraction of the memory and CPU cycles and from much slower drives."
And it consumed a lot more energy, which is the metric we're discussing.
I said your comment about embedded chips was irrelevant because those systems don't, to my knowledge, run word processors. The sub-notebooks do. Open office on my EEE will do everything your 1990 wordperfect box will at a tiny fraction of the power consumption. (And for what it's worth, it will be much prettier, and it goes from powered off to editing a document in ~20 seconds, which is not exactly my memory of wordperfect)
Via sustainable, environmentally responsible methods you can produce amounts of food that compare favorably with what you can produce via various nasty methods currently in use. But either one is "modern agriculture".